


Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Slytherin AU

by Familiarpatterns



Series: Slytherin AU [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts First Year, Hufflepuff Ron, Ravenclaw Hermione, Slytherin AU, Slytherin Harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:05:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1529060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Familiarpatterns/pseuds/Familiarpatterns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One single detail, no matter how small, can change the course of the universe forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Those who lived

Augusta muttered to herself as she battled her way through the weeds home to the village "Owls everywhere, they should know better, they should." At a pained cry from across the moor she huffed impatiently and disappeared with a pop.

In a small village further south concerned muggles hurried by the park where several blonde-haired strangers were singing and dancing amongst the plants. A dentist regarded them critically from the window of her office across the street, before shaking her head and returning to her paperwork.

Returning home later than usual that night Amelia arrived to find her niece awake and giggling, hair characteristically messy. She got the toddler out of bed and made them both hot chocolates with animated animal marshmallows, trying to put the image of a very fat baby in it's mother's arms screaming like the world was ending in an interrogation earlier in the evening.

Twelve of the finest remaining SWAT auror's were chosen to storm the mansion. Cloaked in the darkness of night they crept through the immaculate gardens, impeded only by the youngest slipping on a pile of peacock droppings. The front door relinquished unexpectedly to a whispered alohamora, and they crept throughout the darkened passages, silently flashing communication signals from their wands.  
They arrived outside the single lighted door, and assumed a defensive position before blasting through and training their wands on the solitary figure sitting alone, reading the evening edition of the daily phrophet. The figure sighed, seemingly reading unpeturbed. The highly trained aurors exchanged glances as the reader slowly made his way though the classifieds. Finally the leader of the aurors cleared her throat awkwardly, still crouched in a perfect Alastair III defensive position. The figure looked up, before calmly folding his newspaper and placing it aside.   
"Gentleman," he began, his voice as smooth as the silken green cravat perfectly knotted below his neck, "I believe there has been a misunderstanding."

20 meters below this scene huddled an odd assortment of people. A chubbt, frizzy haired child was the only one unaffected by the atmosphere of fear, and was occupying itself by throwing crumbling bits of mortar into the perfect hair of the toddler opposite, cradled in his mothers arms.

Countries away, a beautiful, smooth-skinned woman tied to the ankle of an owl a collection of her (current) husband's documents she was certain the local ministry would find interested. Smiling to herself, she settled her child to feed from her breast as she watched the bird fly into the sunset.

 

And at number 4 Privet Drive a small child stared out into the street from between the bars of his cot, watching the street lamps go out one by one.


	2. The Not-Vanishing Leg

Mrs. Figg was enjoying a nice quiet cup of tea when the proximity alarm started buzzing. She glared at the fluorescent yellow bell - it was supposed to alert her whenever somebody with hostile intent approached the area, but since Dudley had begun to hit puberty it was picking up an increasing number of false alerts. She sighed, looking longingly at her chocolate biscuits. It was barely 6pm and the summer breeze drifted through her window, making it hard to imagine a less dangerous atmosphere. Still, she pulled herself out of her chair - injury in her hip from the war complaining as always.  
"What do you think, Nuzzles?" she asked the nearest cat. It flicked its tail once at her before closing its eyes and returning to its dose. Well - that was practically hysterical for Nuzzles, so it probably was worth checking out.

She stiffly walked out into the back garden, eyes squinting through her thick glasses. Mrs. Figg was fairly happy with her lot in life, but if she could have just one spell it would be nice to not have to rely on these bloody glasses the whole time. Distracted, she didn't notice the clocked figure until it was right behind her.

"Hey!" she shouted, turning to see it creeping up on her. She was about to remind the hapless lurker that this area was protected by one Albus Dumbledore when she noticed Mr. Dursley climbing out of his car next door. She improvised.

"Get off my bloody grass" she continued, with hardly a pause, "kids these days! No respect for your betters."

Luckily, this was one of the less determined attempts - probably a newly seventeen slytherin looking for something to boast to his mates about. He turned tail and ran, but not before casting a nasty (but luckily invisible) slicing curse at her, hitting her below her knee.

Trying to stay standing on increasingly unsteady legs, she nodded towards her neighbour, who nodded back, evidently impressed at her attitude, before heading inside to his family.

As soon as the door shut behind him Mrs. Figg pulled a portkey out from its covering handkerchief, and disappeared with a pop.

From an upstairs window next door a young boy saw her disappear leaving behind only the severed stump of her ankle and foot clad in sensible brown shoes. However, by ten-and-three-quaters he had already learned not to mention these things to his family. He accepted the "broken leg" explanation the next week when he heard it, even though he had seen a big grey cat pull the leg inside about twenty minutes after her disappearance. You didn't get much more broken than that, he told himself, and tried not to think about it again.

\----------

Neville held the envelope in shaking hands, too afraid to look at his grandmother.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" she demanded "open the bloody thing!"

He attempted to, stubby fingers scraping ineffectually at the seal. Eventually, an exasperated Augusta waved her wand and the letter flew open and into her hands. She read through once slowly, before looking up at the terrified boy with the stinging fingers, then reading it again.

"Well," she said, folding the letter and putting it into her pocket. Neville's eyes began to fill with tears. "I suppose we will have to stop buy Diagon Alley on the way home from St Mungo's next time we are in town," she continued, after a too-long pause. However this had the opposite effect than she had hoped, causing the young boy to burst into tears. Frantically she cast around for something else that might stop the messy torrent. "We can pick up your father's wand while we are there - I'm sure he'd be very proud to have you use it."

Neville flung himself at her and hugged her tightly around her knees (she was tall, he was short), his tears deteriorating into full-blown sobs. Mrs. Longbottom stared confusedly down at him before attempting a tap on the shoulder and ineffectual "there, there". It was unsuccessful.

\----------

The arrival of four owls did not make the Weasley family breakfast much messier, noisier or more chaotic. However, the return of Merlin himself would probably have made the event less messy, noisy and chaotic so this isn't, perhaps, remarkable.

Fred and George both dived for the heaviest envelope as soon as the owls entered the open window, one crying out with pain when his successful grasp resulted in singed fingers. Percy pulled it from his reddened hand smugly, before reading the post script to them

"I took the precaution of cursing the envelope so the first person to touch it would be discourage. I trust this precaution is appreciated."

This was not met with the sigh of defeat and resignation that Percy was expecting. Instead, the twins appeared to find this the funniest thing that had ever occurred to them, before resuming their onslaught to steal his prefect's badge.

Ron's letter fell into the gravy and was rendered unreadable, but as nobody noticed this but Ron it did not dampen the mood of the meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come on - squib she may be but I doubt someone working for Dumbledore would have to struggle through muggle medicine for something as mundane as a broken leg. It must have been something much more severe to land her unable to care for Harry. My headcanon, anyway.


	3. The Letters from Hogwarts

Deputy Headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, looked down at the list before her. Now several muggleborns would be visited by the Headmaster today so that was taken care of. The owl taking the letter to the Lovegood girl had become completely lost and returned not only without delivering it's letter, but bright pink as well. She sighed, while she was not surprised she was concerned about how this - she checked the sheet in front of her - "Luna" was going to fit into Hogwarts. Luna, really, what a name for a child.

Most of the wizarding families had sent in their acceptance - well except for the next Weasley but knowing their owl he would probably graduate before it arrived so there was no need pressing the matter. Her hand paused over the tick next to "Draco Lucius Malfoy", before continuing to the red blemish next to the name she had been avoiding - "Harry Potter, Undelivered".

Her already thin lips pressed themselves together, it's not so much that she hadn't been expecting this, more that she just didn't particularly want to deal with it. As she glanced at the owlery an idea crossed her mind that she would later regret. Anyway, she reasoned to herself, the letter may have just got lost. I'm sure if I sent  _two_ owls the letter would arrive safe and sound in the boy's hands. Ignoring the voice telling her that this would probably just create more problems, she summoned two new letters and sent a house elf off to post them.

\--------

Hermione Granger was not amused. Just because she was eleven years old did not mean she was going to tolerate  _silliness._ She was almost twelve anyway.

"You probably had those doves hidden in your dress - why is a man wearing a dress anyway?" she demanded at the old, bearded man who had appeared in the middle of her living room half way through their Sunday Lunch - without a puff of smoke or anything! If you were going to pretend to do magic, Hermione was quite convinced that you should least pretend properly. Just because he seemed to be able to stun her parents into some sort of bewildered acceptance with a few magic tricks did not mean she was going to be so easily duped.

"If you're really a wizard I bet you could turn my hair pink right now," she told the man, Dumbleedee or something, he said his name was.

"I could," he replied, "quite easily, but you must understand, my dear, the purpose of magic is not for showing off," he reprimanded gently.

"Well that sounds exactly like something a pretender would say," she rebutted, "anyway, what was the whole thing with the doves anyway if it wasn't showing off? They have made a total mess of the carpet."

This seemed not only to throw the old man off for the first time the whole afternoon, but jerk her mother at least out of her stunned reverie. Dr. Gwynth Jenkins shook herself and examined the floor underneath the mantelpiece where the pigeons had gathered.

"Actually dear, it's mostly on the fireplace, so that shouldn't be too much of a bother to clean up," she began - but added after her daughter's stare "but certainly a showy trick to do, regardless of the state of the carpet."

Dumbledore sighed, it had been a lot easier fifty years ago when a couple of sparks would convince almost every child. Internally promising himself that he would  _never_ let Olympe find out at this, he changed the bushy tangle around Hermione's head into a bright pink fuzz.

"Probably something in the fake wand," the bushy hair girl intoned solemnly, clearly unaware of how amusing her chip-monked face looked staring out from its fluorescent halo. Then, she did something no other prospective student had ever done before, and seized Dumbledore's (globally acknowledged as the best dueler of the age) wand, and brandished it towards him.

Glancing down towards his beard that was apparently turning turquoise he vowed that Olympe would  _never_ be able to know what happened here. He'd never hear the end of it.

\----------

McGonagall handed out more envelopes, glad that Albus' interviews seemed to be taking longer than they usually did because he was going to laugh at her when he found out about this. Around her house elves were attaching new letters to every single owl that they could find, and more were swooping in and out of the owlery, waiting for their turn.

\----------

"But Muuuuuuuum," cried Ron, stumbling down the stairs into the kitchen, tripping over the too-long robe, "Why does Percy get new robes when he already has perfectly good ones and I get stuck in these ratty-old-things?" He glared at Mrs. Weasley, though the effect was somewhat dampened by the sea of grey-fabric he was currently swimming in.

"Percy is a prefect, dear, he needs to look smart," she told him, pretending not to hear him swearing under his breath "We'll give those a new coat of dye and take them up a bit and you'll look just fine." After he had stomped upstairs she worriedly counted out seven sickles for the black dye from the tin above the stove. She gave the almost-empty tin an unenthusiastic shake, the sound it made more indicative of empty space than anything else. She closed her eyes, quickly running through some sums in her head, if she found a reason to send the twins to their room before dinner at least once more this week, and Arthur did another two late shifts...

\----------

McGonagall stomped into the Hogsmead Olw Post Office. "I will be hiring all of your owls," she told the man on the front desk imperviously, as the entire house elf population of Hogwarts followed her into the room, laden with sacks full of letters.

 


	4. The Keeper of the Bills

Minerva McGonnagall did not usually make mistakes. And when she did, she did not usually get caught in those mistakes. And she certainly could not remember the last time she had been disciplined for a mistake. And yet, here she was, standing in front of the headmaster's office like she was one of the Weasley twins.   
She cleared her throat. Dumbledore looks up from the piece of parchment he was perusing.  
"Is there anything you want to tell me, Minerva?"  
She pretends to be thinking about it.   
"I may have had some difficulty with delivering one of the first year's letters," she conceded. Dumbledore nodded.   
"Does that have something to do with this bill I received from the Hogsmeade post office?" he asked, giving the roll of parchment a shake, allowing it to unroll across his quite large desk, past Fawks' perch, and along the floor until it bumped into McGonnagall's feet. It wasn't even completely unrolled yet.  
Time to go on the defensive.  
"You will recall I did suggest that you or I attend this particular case, due to the muggle guardians involved,"  
Dumbledore's lips thinned, and expression that would have been far more intimidating if the beard surrounding those lips was not a bright shade of turquoise.   
"And you will recall that I expressly forbid you to attend the property in any way.”  
Minerva glared. She suspected. She suspected what was going on to that poor boy but she did not have any proof, and without proof she was not capable of going over Dumbledore’s head. She could not possible comprehend what was more important than the welfare of a child, especially in this day and age, but her hands were more or less tied. She just hoped that when the boy finally made it to Hogwarts it would appear that her concerns were unfounded.  
“I will take over this particular case, Minerva,” Dumbledore continued, and then turned back to his work in a way that made it clear that she was dismissed. Her humiliation completed its transformation into indignation.  
“Fine,” she snapped, “Though I hope you know I am very disappointed.”  
As she stalked out of the room, she could not resist one parting barb.  
“The fluorescent hair suits you,”   
The echo of those words seeming, to Dumbledore at least, to ring much longer than the sound of the slamming door that followed them.  
——————————----  
Madame Pomfrey grinned at the basket of lethifold wool Dumbledore had delivered, her price for fixing his hair and beard and promising not to tell Minerva how it had become so brightly coloured.  
————————————  
Minerva stood atop the astronomy tower, summoning owls as they headed towards the headmaster’s office. She would never hear the end of it if she couldn’t intercept the bill from The Magical Menagerie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole McGonnagall thing was inspired by a post on tumblr that I can't seem to find anywhere. If anyone knows what I'm talking about please let me know so I can credit it properly.


End file.
